Las Vegas teacher shortage prompts rethinking of class size cuts

Thursday, May 25, 2006 | 5:40 a.m.

LAS VEGAS - A teacher shortage could pull more than 1,000 teacher specialists back into Clark County school classrooms, scuttle plans to cut class sizes and freeze a grant for computer, reading, language and other specialty programs, officials said.

"This is a drastic issue that needs drastic measures to ensure we have our classrooms covered," Superintendent Walt Rulffes said Wednesday as he outlined teacher staffing plans for next fall for the nation's fifth-largest school district.

"We can't wait until the summer," he said. "We have to do something right now."

Advocates for smaller class sizes said they were disappointed the district was poised to abandon a plan crafted in December to reduce kindergarten classes from an average of 28 students to 25, cut fourth and fifth-grade classes from 30 students to 28, and limit sixth-grade classes to 29 students.

"We know children do better in smaller class sizes. That's been demonstrated time and time again," said Louise Helton, executive director of Communities In Schools of Southern Nevada, a nonprofit group that provides at-risk children with food and medical supplies. "This is just not a happy circumstance."

The proposal to reassign specialists drew fire from some critics who question whether specialty curricula can survive.

But Mary Ella Holloway, president of the Clark County Education Association, said the union believes first in hiring qualified full-time teachers.

"What's the alternative?" she asked. "Having substitutes in our classrooms? They're not qualified."

Rulffes said the district also could lose $16 million in grants that depend on schools adding about 265 specialty teachers for the 2006-07 school year.

District administrators have been meeting with principals, and school trustees were expected this week to discuss efforts to alleviate the teacher shortage.

The fast-growing district is the fifth-largest in the nation, with almost 300,000 students and more than 18,000 teachers. As the population around Las Vegas has boomed and the district has opened dozens of new schools, teacher recruiters have struggled to keep pace.

Some critics blame low teacher pay and rising housing costs in a region where the median cost of new homes almost doubled from $177,000 in 2003 to $343,000 in 2005.

An American Federation of Teachers union survey released last year put Nevada teacher pay 36th in the nation in 2003-04, with an average starting salary of $27,942. The starting pay in the Clark County district was $30,299, with an average teacher salary of $42,767.

At the beginning of the 2003-04 school year, the district reassigned 411 specialists back into the classroom. Two years later, the district started the school year short 287 teachers, but filled classrooms with substitutes and kept hiring teachers throughout the year.

Recruiters also have gone to other states, Spain and the Philippines to invite teachers to Las Vegas, and the district has offered one-time cash bonuses of $2,000 to help teacher recruits relocate.

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Information from: Las Vegas Review-Journal, http://www.lvrj.com